Planet Scenes October 2020
 |
Mars moving away from its opposition point in Pisces on October 22, 2020, nine days after opposition. On this evening, I had excellent views with my 8" f/6 newtonian and my C8, albeit of the less interesting hemisphere of Mars. I was able to take the power up to 255x with the newtonian, and up to 299x with the C8 before the seeing began to impose limits. Mare Sirenum was the main feature facing us this night, so the view I had included a subtly mottled brown area in most of the northern hemisphere, along with the tiny white dot of the polar cap; I could not detect any detail in the southern hemisphere, which presented Tharsis and Amazonis toward us. |
|
 |
Mars reached opposition on October 13, 2020, in central Pisces, still somewhat south of the ecliptic, but on a northward trajectory that will carry it back to the ecliptic just before it begins prograde motion again. On this very clear but humid night, I figured that the seeing might be good so I observed Mars with my C8 at 208x and 299x. During moments of good seeing I could just barely make out the tiny remnant of the north polar cap, as well as the almost parallel dark regions of Mare Tyrrhenum and Mare Cimmerium. Some fainter dark markings were also visible between these areas and the polar cap, which according to the Sky & Telescope Mars Profiler were probably Syrtis Minor and Trivium Charontis. Another excellent resource is the NASA solar system simulator. |
|
 |
On October 8, 2020, I imaged Mars in Pisces in several different orientations, to try to get Uranus in the picture as well. I also took some different shots of Jupiter and Saturn still moving slowly prograde in eastern Sagittarius. Note in the closer-in shot that you can easily detect the two large globular clusters M22 and M55 and even the small one M75. | |
 |
On October 7, 2020 Mars is one day past being closest to Earth, so it should be around it's largest for this apparition. It's going to be brightest next week at opposition. Note its position on this image compared to the image below from 19 September. | |
 |
On October 6, 2020 Jupiter and Saturn are still just beginning to slowly move prograde toward the east, but the gap between them has not noticeably lessened yet. As the fall progresses, Jupiter will begin to accelerate and finally overtake Saturn in the last few days of the year. This image was taken with a Quantaray zoom lens set at 60mm on my cropped sensor Nikon D40, so it represents a fairly zoomed-in scene; note that the image only shows eastern Sagittarius from the Teaspoon asterism to the Terebellum, just barely to the western border of Capricornus. | |
